Hunter x Hunter 10 – Leorio Confirmed for Boss

Once again, apologies for the sporadic posting lately. Things have been quite hectic for me at work lately, and I have less energy available for writing these days. Friday was particularly bad, which is why I skipped the weekly Sister Princess post again. (Probably doesn’t help that I have gotten back into video gaming in the past few months, though I play those only on my days off.) That posting series will be back this week, however, no matter how shitty my Friday is — but after that, it will take another two-week break, because I have something good planned for the middle of the month that I want to pour all my energies into. It should be quite fun for everyone!

Anyway, Hunter x Hunter! I quite enjoyed this week’s episode — it actually might be the first episode of the remake that I liked just as much as its counterpart from the original series. It took only 10 episodes! The mind games between the prison team and Team Hunter are fun, and when you throw Tonpa being an asshole into a mix, everything becomes wonderfully combustible!

I really love how deceptively simple the majority rules element of the test is, along with the games and plots the prisoners concoct to prolong the time of the test. It all seems like silly shonen nonsense, but the way everything is used is decently clever. The plan to make Big Blue pretend to be unconscious is simple and logical, although you could probably say our heroes are big dummies for initially taking the prisoners at their word and not rushing out to check the dude’s health at the first opportunity. Their minds being clouded by the process of the majority rules stuff is a decent excuse, but still, someone probably should have checked him out long before Leorio actually stepped up and did the work.

But, meh, entertaining in-fighting, with Tonpa being a smirking bastard all the while. He didn’t even have to do much to set Leorio off — he just stokes the flames ever so slightly, and sends Leorio on the grumpy child path just a bit quicker than he might have otherwise by being such a smug prick. “Hey, bro, people gotta do their thing sometimes, you know? Don’t be such a hater.” Then Leorio stomps to his corner to sulk and Tonpa giggles to himself. Although I do like Leorio being all, “I’m gonna be a doctor and save people!” but also lead his teammates in a vote to murder a prisoner lolololol

And then betting! Honestly, I don’t think Leorio was going to really let the dude fall to his death — he explains that he obviously knows full well that the guy is still alive (he can spot that sort of thing with his awesome doctor skills), so I think Leorio gathered from his interactions with Kurapika that the guy was a huge chicken and would save his neck at any cost. A bit of a risk if Leorio doesn’t actually want to kill the guy, but the payoff was worth it.

And then there’s Hisoka’s part of the episode! I really like the way this plays out — the fight is solidly animated, particularly the shot of the knife dude’s initial rush at Hisoka, and all the bits with Hisoka dodging the knives and whatnot. This gives me much more hope for a certain awesome fight that will happen later on this arc. The way the violence is handled here gives me a bit more hope, too. (Uh, for lack of a better word.) The bit where Killua kills the two dudes on the airship came off as a bit awkward to me, but the use of the shadow for the decapitation is pretty cool, and it allows the animators to get the point across without having to be crazy bloody. I’m honestly satisfied with that.

This whole bit also makes me wonder just how many tests the warden planned in this tower. Hisoka doesn’t have a team with him, unless he killed everyone just before the tower’s exit — but I think we’re supposed to assume Hisoka has been all by himself the whole time. Maybe some people fell into team-based games, and others fell into one-person trials? Probably couldn’t have too much of the latter, or else there wouldn’t be enough room for people to roam the tower!